ICON & IBM: Transforming Patient Recruitment with IBM Watson

Patient Identification and Clinical Trial Matching

ICON and IBM are working together on a pilot programme that has the potential to transform clinical trial feasibility, patient recruitment and study start-up timelines by using IBM’s Watson supercomputing system for Clinical Trial Matching to relevant trials.

The pilot program will run for more than six months, based on 25 oncology trials, with participation of patients and investigators at several major US medical centres.

Clinical Trial Matching is an alternative to traditional, manual methods of patient identification and recruitment that includes canvassing sites, advertising and feasibility based on historical data.

For the first time in the history of clinical trials, ICON will be able to tell sponsors how many patients match their trial criteria, where they are located and how we will recruit them. We will be able to conduct real-time feasibility analyses and model protocol scenarios based on inclusion and exclusion criteria by identifying patients based on medical histories and pre-existing conditions with investigators from research sites. And with a selection of protocol models available, our team of in-house consultants can predict and advise on the impact of each scenario on clinical trial outcomes.

This will resolve an expensive component in clinical trials that causes 80% of trials to fail on enrolment timelines. Clinical Trial Matching will reduce delays and associated costs.